Wojciech Goszczyński, Anna Wójtewicz
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland
Book Review
DeSoucey, Michaela. 2016. Contested Tastes—Foie Gras
and the Politics of Food. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton
University Press
W
hat can a sociologist actually learn by look-ing at foie gras lylook-ing on their plate? What can we say about culture, ethics, taste, relations, social movements, consumers, and producers, looking at food? To what extent can food become the object, the protagonist of sociological analysis? These are the questions which Michaela DeSoucey is attempt-ing to address in her book reviewed here.The book may be located within a broad interdisci-plinary trend of research into social, economic, and cultural aspects of food. One of its poles is marked by economized, neo-Marxist analyses of industrial and alternative networks of food production (e.g., Goodman, DuPuis, and Goodman 2014). The other trend, definitely closer to the author of the reviewed book, analyzes food from the perspective of an-thropology and studies of culture (e.g., Ashley et al. 2004; Belasco 2007). The analyses from this cir-cle treat food as a cultural phenomenon, an artifact which may be used to decode crucial phenomena, or processes occurring in a society. This is distinc-tive of anthropology of food which perceives food as a cultural construct (e.g., Couninhan and van Es-terik 2013). Tracing food, we may get insight into the
universe of religious rituals, control, and individ-ual identity (Douglas 2013), look at class divisions (Bourdieu 2013), the development of ethnic identity, the history of entire continents (Mintz 2013). In an engaged variety—these studies focus on the issues of citizenship (Bilewicz and Śpiewak 2015), social justice, sexuality, gender, and race (e.g., Alkon and Agyeman 2011).
Food is treated by the researcher as a mirror in which a reflection of the society may be seen, or a black box the decoding of which may disclose the way the social world is constructed. The author approached the issue of food in a similar way, building her story around foie gras mentioned in the title and attempt-ing to describe the cultural and political controver-sies connected with food. The dish in question is the ground on the basis of which DeSoucey talks about the construction of controversy, morality of taste, nationalism and sense of national belonging, indus-trialization of production, social movements, and consumer activism. Looking at the dish made from fattened duck or goose liver, the author attempts to tell the reader how local and national identities are constructed and reconstructed, how the class
indi-cators of taste have been changing, and how con-sumer movements of protest are initiated.
From the formal angle, the book is divided into five chapters by subject matter. The first (“What Can We Learn from Liver”) briefly introduces the reader into the issues and specificity of food studies, describes the history of controversies around the product, and also uses the category of gastropolitics which is key to this work. Chapter two (“Vive le Foie Gras!”) pro-vides the reader with the insight into the phenome-non of foie gras, accounts the history, and industrial transformation of the product, locates it within the national, cultural, and technological context. Chap-ter three (“Gastronationalism on the Ground”) fo-cuses on local conditionings of production—refers to the role and meaning of identity, the construction of national idylls and political movements connect-ed with them. The fourth part of the book (“Foiehi-bition”) takes the reader to Chicago and describes the conflict which exploded in this city around local producers and restaurateurs serving dishes from foie
gras. This chapter supplements the publication with
studies on social movements, consumer activism—it emphasizes the dynamic nature of the debate which erupted around the controversial technology of the production of foie gras. Chapter five (“Paradox of Perspective”) concentrates on the reconstruction of the perspectives of the two sides of this conflict, stressing the symbolic meaning of food.
The narration begins with a description of damag-es done by activists fighting for animal rights, who repainted the house of one of the most famous law-yers and restaurateurs serving foie gras in the Amer-ican county of Sonoma. The author uses this event
and the description of the process of gavage, the pro-cess of force-feeding geese and ducks, to immerse in the considerations on the morality and taste. There appear threads pertaining to the class character of food, the construction of products, moral disgust and social movements developed around it, cultural anchors, and individual or collective identities ac-companying the product. The framework overarch-ing the chapter is the key notion of gastropolitics viewed and defined as one of the symbolic politics which specifies the authority of particular actors to define and construct the surrounding world. In other words, it is a fight for the opportunity to as-sign cultural meanings and enforce particular in-terpretations and behaviors of other people. This is highlighted by the dynamic and culture-bound nature of food. In a sense, the production and con-sumption of food is a social practice which can be defined, using the definition by Susan Mylan (2015), at the intersection of materiality, cultural meanings, and knowledge. The very notion of gastropolitics is yet connected with the concept of the politics of desires borrowed from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattariand by Melanie DuPuis and transformed by her (DuPuis 2006:124). Briefly, the politics of de-sires assumes that human dede-sires and images form frameworks, maps which shape the world as a mir-ror reflection of unreal dreams. It seems that this metaphor well-illustrates the idea of both the first chapter and the whole publication being reviewed. It presents the conflict over the authority to assign meanings, define fragments of reality by the pro-ducers of foie gras, on the one hand, and the activists connected with the animal rights protection move-ment, on the other. The dispute exceeds the sim-ple discussion on the way of feeding animals and
Book Review: DeSoucey, Michaela. 2016. Contested Tastes—Foie Gras and the Politics of Food. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press
touches upon the fundamentally different visions of relations between the human being and nature. Likewise Mary Douglas (2008), DeSoucey treats eating and food as the field for activity, a medium by means of which other categories exert influence. By analyzing the conflict around the pate, the au-thor tries to comment on a deep crack in culture. In a sense, the book reviewed is a story about wars occurring at the intersection between the country-side and the city, the state and social movements, the conservatives and the liberals, the market and the citizen society. Referring to the author’s words: “Considering food through the lens of cultural so-ciology—especially how some foods become the foci of public sentiment—similarly sharpens our theories of how cultural categories are substantiat-ed, and how cultural power is deploysubstantiat-ed, harnesssubstantiat-ed, suppressed, and contested” (p. 17). An opinion which seems to be close to the book under review is the one expressed by Alison Hope Alkon and Julian Agyeman (2011:2) who claim that for those involved the choice of dish has a deep political meaning; it is a choice of a particular construction of the world, a set of symbols which determines that group’s vi-sion of the world.
The author thus goes beyond the classic framework established by food studies; she does not focus on the deconstruction of industrial or alternative pro-duction systems. Also, she reaches beyond cultural anthropology, emphasizing the dynamic nature of eating. She treats the dispute around foie gras as a the-atre play, analyzing the motivations, attitudes, and values of the actors engaged. In her work, she uses the term “performance”—treating the behaviors of producers and gourmets, as well as the opponents of
foie gras as a performance built around controversy.
In the discussed chapter, DeSoucey describes how actors prepare to play their parts, what role scientific controversy and moral disgust play in this process, how particular groups of experts—scientists, cooks, ethicists, activists, consumers—are recruited. De-scribing this process, the author avoids simply sup-porting one of the conflicting sides, which is one of the characteristic elements of the engaged food stud-ies (e.g., Lyson 2004). The described performance takes place in a triangle whose poles are marked by the market, the state, and social movements. Accord-ing to the author, the symbolic food policy occurs within the framework determined by tensions and commonalities generated by those three types of group actors. Analyzing the controversies around
foie gras, the author—anthropologist—refers to the
classic definitions of political activities in social movements. She describes the process of industrial-ization and de-industrialindustrial-ization of food production and consumption, indicates the state as the regula-tor of both the law and the symbolic field where the production and consumption take place, and, finally, discusses how social movements are built and mobi-lized around controversy. The dialectic combination of taste and disgust is capable of generating institu-tionalized and informal loads of political activity in whose symbolic center the decoded food is located. In the second chapter (“Vive le Foie Gras!”), the au-thor takes the reader on a journey to the region of the French Strasbourg. This part contains the descrip-tion of the significance of the dish and the changing process of its production. The author begins her sto-ry by deconstructing the myth being created around
foie gras. She uses food to describe the retrospective
constructions of national identities. Food may be used to culturally strengthen the boundaries, to de-fine members of the group and those who do not belong to it. Obviously, this is not the first attempt of this kind. For example, Mary Douglas (2013:48) described the religious meaning of selected eating habits in a similar way. Psyche Williams-Forson (2006), in her brilliant study, describes how food (in this particular case, chicken legs) may be used to create, strengthen, and cross race barriers. Here, it is worth stopping for a while. In our view, food may play the role of a mediator—by means of symbols assigned to it, it may connect or divide within the same culture, gender, or ethnos. Symbols rooted in a society are embedded in food, as well as in the process of eating. This explains the Scandinavians’ maniac attachment to pickled herring or the time spent selecting wine in the South of Europe. These are activities exceeding the physiological limits of taste—by choosing and eating we make ourselves assigned to a particular community and its tradi-tions, we define our attitude to the dominant group or a minority. It is no chance that food was one of the key elements, or symbols around which affili-ation to counter-cultures was built (Belasco 2007) or the most important consumer movements were built (Devltere and Pollet 2005). This is caused by the very essence, idea of eating with its intimate crossing of barriers between what is social and indi-vidual, between culture and the body, biology and sensuality. In this sense, food and its consumption are connected with individual and social identity. It is the sense of belonging and the construction of symbolic areas of reference that Marie DeSoucey de-scribes. For her, foie gras is linked with the project of
patrimony—the idealized vision of a French
nation-al community with its heritage and attachment to the terroir—the place the meaning of which reach-es beyond the simple geographical conditioning. DeSoucey accounts the development of the myth around a national, patriotic sentiment. Describing a dream of the Breton countryside, an image of an old woman feeding geese, the author deconstructs origin stories which were initially transmitted oral-ly, and later used by industry and advertising. This is a type of myth which leads to the rooting; which locates individual identity within the national sym-bolic field. In the case of the dish under analysis, these are respectively: territory, family celebration, the iconic image of grandmother, reference to rural-ity. These bind the consuming individual with the idea of the nation.
Foie gras becomes a tool in the fight for
maintain-ing national identity. This is proved by one of the more interesting examples presented in the book. Expanding its outlet markets, one of the bigger com-panies producing liver pates decided to produce it so that it would be Halal—allowed to be eaten also by Muslims observing the rules of their religion. This triggered the fury of extreme national organi-zations which started the consumer boycott of this type of product. The coherence of the symbolic field was infringed, it was intruded by new actors incon-sistent with the conservative idea of patrimony. This led to the establishment of a new reactive movement whose objective was to protect the “pureness” of food and national values encoded by it.
DeSoucey also addresses the issue of the industrial transformation of the product. She describes an in-teresting combination of images pertaining to food
origin. The connection between the terroir and pat-rimony is thus institutionalized and codified. What is more, this law becomes the weapon in the fight for the consolidation of cultural constructions and economic interests. The struggle to be listed among regional products certified by the European Union; using state institutions for protection by means of a certificate system (e.g., the famous French AOC, or the Italian DOC). An equally interesting thread, de-scribed by the author, is the creation of countryside idylls, neo-ruralism. Foie gras, together with other regional products, may be a powerful tool attracting tourists and consumers to the area. The thing is that what consumers find on the spot must correspond with their projections. If we speak about food, then it must be produced by an old farmer, processed by his wife, and the place where it happens must be a charming, small village somewhere in the prov-inces. Obviously, this is not a phenomenon limited to France. Similar processes are described by Fabio Parasecoli (2014:260) in the case of Italy arguing that what we define as Italian cuisine is in fact il-lusion, mirage basing on ephemeral national iden-tity. Consumers’ visions and desires receive the power to transform the world by means of market mechanisms of supply and demand. Thanks to it, it is possible to move a highlander inn, which is a simulation itself, to the beach in Sopot. This phe-nomenon is analyzed by Brian Short (2006:143) in his study on the rural idyll. Referring to John Urry, he stresses that the society is being saturated with pre-industrial symbols attracting the middle-class who are willing to pay for such an illusion (Short 2006:143). The neo-ruralism and the rural idyll are approached similarly by David Bell (2006), who em-phasizes the metropolitan source of symbols and
images referring to the countryside and food. This author also used the notion of gastro-idyll. It refers to the connection between food and consumer de-sires, and may have various facets: local, ecological, health-related. Coming back to the reviewed book, DeSoucey describes the process of the emergence of such idyllic visions. She analyzes the transforma-tions of regions, their economies, or even the land-scape which occurs around the cultural anchor of
foie gras. Tourist routes, spots of tasting, restaurants,
farms, or even art in the described regions are sub-ordinated to a defined utopian vision of locality, one of the main symbols of which is foie gras.
In chapter four (“Foiehibition”) of the reviewed book, we leave the French province and move to Chicago. The very title of the chapter is a word-play joining foie gras and prohibition, which well-reflects the content of this section. The narration is built around the prohibition of producing and selling
foie gras which for some time was in force in this
U.S. city. The nature of the dish and the production technology based on force-feeding result in the fact that the goose or duck liver pate locates in the very center of cultural war. On the one side of the bar-ricade there are representatives of the middle-class and cooks who value the patrimonial imagery and sensory qualities. On the other side, there are rep-resentatives of the same metropolitan middle-class yet engaged in social anti-consumer movements. For the latter group, foie gras has become the symbol of fighting cruelty and lack of transparent systems of animal production, or even broader—the contem-porary capitalism. Using the range of direct and po-litical activities typical of social movements, part of the activists contributed to the passing of the law and the production mode which is inconsistent with
it. For a very long time foie gras had been feast day food and connected with the upper class. As point-ed out by Pierre Bourdieu (2013:32), this type of rich, expensive dish requiring sensory training were characteristic of the bourgeoisie. Industrial revolu-tion changed everything. Food became commonly available, industrial techniques and tricks reduced production costs (Conkin 2008). Belt-system pro-duction, industrial techniques, equipment for birds mass feeding and processing led to the production of “Bloc de Foie Gras,” a modified molded block at a definitely lower price. Interestingly, in spite of dis-connecting the product from the area and changing the regime of production, the set of symbols encod-ed by such food has not changencod-ed. Consumers of foie
gras do not imagine the gloominess of factory, the
system of pipes for force-feeding animals, the pro-duction belt, but still refer to the idyllic vision of pat-rimony. We consider it a worthwhile observation, as it indicates the disconnection of materiality and meanings. Despite the radically different mode of production, the values encoded by the product have not changed. Materiality and meanings, enframed by our desires get disconnected from the physical world. Looking at a tin of industrially processed pate, we still see a never existent imagined commu-nity. Industrial revolution caused the patrimony to lose its class nature, and at the supermarket shelf it has become available to all.
Chapter three (“Gastronationalism on the Ground”) is devoted by the author to the issues of shaping the imagined national community. DeSoucey uses the notion of gastronationalism. It implies that the production, processing, and consumption of food:
“create and sustain the emotive power of national attachment” (DeSoucey 2012:433). In the book, one may find two ways of understanding this notion. On the macro-scale it defines a set of symbols connect-ed with a community; on the micro-scale it draws the line between the group members and strang-ers. Food is used in the fight for national identity as a symbol activating cultural script of affiliation to a community, but also as a weapon supposed to humiliate. It is worth mentioning some examples of using pork by national organizations—in the case of the Polish Defense League (Polska Liga Obrony), slices of bacon were sent to members of the Mus-lim Religious Association (Muzułmański Związek Religijny).1 Pork is also frequently used in Europe as a symbol, for example, it is found at construction sites of new mosques.2
The example of foie gras described in the book is a little less extreme, but it refers to a similar phe-nomenon. The author describes the renaissance of the craftsman ways of the production of this food, analyzing how the symbols of attachment to the nation are constructed and strengthened. She men-tions an interesting thread of cultural nostalgia, power of sentiment, and how this influences the specificity of the community, the economic poten-tial of producers, or even space construction. The cultural reconstruction involves legal regulations; there are certificates to guarantee quality or regional
1 From “Gazeta Wyborcza” article “Polscy islamofobi mają nowy
genialny pomysł” by Łukasz Woźnicki. Retrieved September 08, 2017 (http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,16020932,Polscy_islamofo-bi_maja_nowy__genialny__pomysl___Wysylamy.html).
2 From news portal www.natemat.pl article “Podłożyć świnię
muzułmaninowi” by Janusz Wójcik. Retrieved September 08, 2017 (http://janwojcik.natemat.pl/86007,podlozyc-swinie-muzu-lmaninowi).
Book Review: DeSoucey, Michaela. 2016. Contested Tastes—Foie Gras and the Politics of Food. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press Wojciech Goszczyński & Anna Wójtewicz
institutional lobbying to attacks on property—the scope of activities of the participants in the conflict over food happens to be really wide. This does not refer only to bird liver pate—different kinds of con-flict pertaining to the production of beef, whaling, seal hunting, shark fin soup provoke both sides to a heated debate. The arguments in these disputes are most often similar—one side of the conflict re-fers to the construction of patrimony, and the oth-er to the social construction of suffoth-ering. Simulta-neously, everywhere common, apparently trivial, problems lead to intensive clashing of particular consumer and activist groups. Considering the ac-tual social potential of food, we have to agree with the statement by Charles Levkoe (2013:587) who ar-gues that: “food can be a powerful metaphor for the way we organize and relate to society. Beyond subsistence, food is a social and cultural expres-sion of individuals. It acts as an entry point into larger debates and discourses around a multitude of issues.” DeSoucey shows that looking at a plate with foie gras, listening to the voices of delighted consumers or outraged activists, we are able to no-tice serious social and cultural cracks.
Let us now proceed to the conclusions, that is the least pleasurable part of every review. The read-er has surely noticed that the reviewed book has gained the approval of the authors of this review. Among other things, it has been facilitated by the construction of the book that relies on the descrip-tion of one product. It is evident that DeSoucey has succeeded in her in-depth analysis, has im-mersed in the described world. At the same time, she has successfully avoided the one-dimension perception of the investigated world, typical of
food studies. The author attempts to reconstruct the motivations and the ways of thinking of both sides of the conflict. The applied perspective con-necting anthropology with political studies is also interesting. The use of the theory of social move-ments and political activities enabled the author to create an original, and, more importantly, dynamic framework of studies on social and cultural im-portance of food. The sensitivity to notions is also impressive. DeSoucey applies a series of original or borrowed categories which enrich the toolkit of a food researcher. On writing these words, in the beginning, it seemed rather controversial to build the text based on the plan of the letter V—two ex-treme geographical and subject-matter cases were described. DeSoucey took the readers on a tour of France and Chicago, leaving out what lies in be-tween. It has to be admitted, though, that being aware of the program simplification, we accept such a dichotomous comparison of the analyzed cases—it results in a more distinct outline of the phenomenon under study.
Obviously, the book is not error free; we are not en-tirely sure what research the author had conducted nor how; how the respondents had been selected nor what research techniques used; what the scheme and mode of analysis had been. The story, perhaps a bit methodologically disorganized, is based on an attempt to deeply investigate, to reflectively recon-struct the discourse, values, and tensions. DeSoucey swiftly moves between the French province and local food processors and a kebab bar offering foie
gras sauce, which has become extremely popular in
Chicago. Additionally, in this journey, besides the deep description of the very phenomenon, one may penalizing the production and selling of this type
of food. In the chapter, the author describes the set of activities of consumer movements and count-er-movements. From the analytical perspective, an interesting element is the emerging class threads. These types of cultural wars for food take place between people of similar backgrounds and cul-tural capital. Researchers investigating alternative food movements often point out that their mobili-zation potential may be limited to white metropol-itan well-educated consumers (Goodman, DuPuis, Goodman 2104). Moreover, both the opponents and supporters of this particular technique of food pro-duction fight for the access to the same social niche. Using the language borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu, DeSoucey points out that: “taste is a ‘practical op-erator’ in this regard, transforming objects such as foods and culinary styles into distinct signs of class position. For the sociologist, then, contested tastes necessarily manifest, develop, and reproduce with-in the settwith-ings of classed social relations” (p. 139). One element of this chapter raises certain doubts— analyzing the behaviors of social movements, the author rejects consumer subjectivity—she consid-ers their actual impact as minor. It is our convic-tion that the role of consumer’s agency should not be underestimated. There are studies proving that by empowering the buyers, it is possible to correct the functioning of a system to some extent (Bevir and Trentmann 2007). The example of the increas-ing popularity of vegetarianism or organic food shows that even a small group of consumers with a class-rooted persuasion potential may influence others even by establishing trends or fashions. In other words, in the long-term perspective, a small conflict of consumers in one American city may
sig-nal the changes in the approach to consumption, production standards, relations between the indi-vidual and the industrial complex.
In the last subject-matter chapter (“The Paradox of Perspective”), DeSoucey goes beyond the sociolo-gy of social movements or political activities—this conflict is analyzed from the perspective of an an-thropologist of culture. For the author, it is most of all the fight for the possibility to define the symbol-ic field. An important mechanism to do it is moral disgust. The feeding and raising of animals play the role of a symbol, they allow one to focus their actions on one’s particular goal. Here emerges the phenomenon identified as the paradox of percep-tion. The thing is that there is no clear information whether the process of production causes the suf-fering of animals, nor whether it negatively stands alone against the background of the industrialized agribusiness. Using different terminology—in or-der for materiality to take shape, it needs to be ac-companied by meanings and context knowledge. However, the controversies around food show that even within the same class there exist complete-ly dissimilar symbolic fields which construct the perception of materiality in a different way. What for some will be a barbarian manifestation of the human dominance over the animal, for others will be sanctified by tradition. Every group will have its advocates, experts, scientists. The controversial foods will be space for the symbolic tug of war, the fight for dominance over the field of symbols. De-scribing this battle, DeSoucey reconstructs an en-tire repository of “weaponry” used by both sides. Ranging from advertising campaigns, urban gue-rilla, taking advantage of the media, lawsuits, and
Goodman, David, Melanie DuPuis, and Michael Goodman. 2014. Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics. Oxon: Routledge.
Levkoe, Charles. 2013. “Learning Democracy through Food Justice Movements.” Pp. 587-602 in Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by C. Couninhan and P. van Esterik. Oxon: Routledge. Lyson, Thomas. 2004. Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food
and Community. Medford: Tufts University Press.
Mintz, Sidney. 2013. “Time, Sugar and Sweetness.” Pp. 91-107 in
Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by C. Couninhan and P. van
Esterik. Oxon: Routledge.
Mylan, Josephine. 2015. “Understanding the Diffusion of Sustain-able Product-Service Systems: Insight from Sociology of Consump-tion and Practice Theory.” Journal of Cleaner ProducConsump-tion 97:13-20. Parasecoli, Fabio. 2014. Al Dente. A History of Food in Modern
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Short, Brian. 2006. “Idyllic Ruralities.” Pp. 133-149 in Handbook
of Rural Studies, edited by P. Cloke, T. Marsden, and P. Mooney.
London: Sage.
Williams-Forson, Psyche. 2006. Building Houses out of Chicken
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Alkon, Hope Alison and Julian Agyeman. 2011. Cultivating Food
Justice. Race, Class and Sustainability. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Ashley, Bob et al. 2004. Food and Cultural Studies. Oxon: Routledge. Belasco, Warren. 2007. Appetite for a Change: How a
Countercul-ture Took on the Food Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Bell, David. 2006. “Variations of the Rural Idyll.” Pp. 149-161 in
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P. Mooney. London: Sage.
Bevir, Mark and Frank Trentmann. 2007. Governance,
Consum-ers and Citizens: Agency and Resistance in Contemporary Politics.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bilewicz, Aleksandra and Ruta Śpiewak. 2015. “Enclaves of Ac-tivism and Taste: Consumer Cooperatives in Poland as Alter-native Food Network.” Socio.hu 3:145-166.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2013. “A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.” Pp. 31-40 in Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by C. Couninhan and P. van Esterik. Oxon: Routledge.
Conkin, Paul. 2008. Revolution Down on the Farm: The
Transfor-mation of American Agriculture Since 1929. Lexington: University
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Couninhan, Carole and Penny van Esterik, (eds.). 2013. Food
and Culture: A Reader. Oxon: Routledge.
DeSoucey, Michaela. 2012. “Gastronationalism.” Pp. 432-455 in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by G. Ritzer. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
Devltere, Patrick and Ignace Pollet. 2005. “Co-Operatives and Fair Trade.” Working papers of University of Leuven.
Douglas, Mary. 2008. Food in the Social Order. Oxon: Routledge. Douglas, Mary. 2013. “The Abominations of Leviticus.” Pp. 48-59in Food and Culture: A Reader, edited by C. Couninhan and P. van Esterik. Oxon: Routledge.
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also find a whole variety of notions, concepts, ideas aiming at the reconstruction of a fragment of the contemporary world.
The book is situated at the boundary between sci-entific books and the popular science ones, with all its consequences. However, this does not change the two most important advantages of this book. The first, significant from our research perspective, pertains to the quality of the work and its poten-tial to attract researchers to studies on social and
cultural conditionings of food. In our part of Eu-rope, it is still a new discipline, struggling to gain its scientific status, and every valuable published work deserves to be disseminated. The other ad-vantage is a more down-to-earth one; the reviewed book is simply well-written and it engrosses the reader and draws them into the story about cul-tural and social functions of a plate full of foie gras. This is yet sufficient for us to recommend the book to readers interested in the political consequences of controversies in culture.
References
Goszczyński, Wojciech and Anna Wójtewicz. 2017. “Book Review: DeSoucey, Michaela. 2016. Contested Tastes—Foie Gras and the
Politics of Food. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.” Qualitative Sociology Review 13(4):160-169. Retrieved Month, Year
(http://www.qualitativesociologyreview.org/ENG/archive_eng.php).
Book Review: DeSoucey, Michaela. 2016. Contested Tastes—Foie Gras and the Politics of Food. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press Wojciech Goszczyński & Anna Wójtewicz
